Connections
by again please
Summary: He'd never imagined that once he touched her mind, he might never be able to break their connection completely. Beneath her fear, a kind of purity, a strength, a righteous sureness in herself that was almost dizzying for him to take in. And now he wants more. Somewhat tentative, one-sided Reylo, across great distances, and against his better judgement.
1. Beggars and Choosers

What most people don't realize is just how subjective memory actually is.

When he is charged with extracting information from one prisoner or another, he knows that most in his company believe the process to be simple, as if the mind is a database of security recordings to be accessed with a wave of his hand. Just one of the many misconceptions non-Force users have about his capabilities, the applications of the power that flows through him.

He only makes it look easy.

Even the most easily opened mind requires a skilled interpreter to sift through the billions of neurons, to follow branching electrical paths through a veritable universe of synapses, all chattering with a thousand voices every second just to control the twitch of a finger trapped in uncomfortable restraints, the ragged exhale of breath, the panicked shifting of eyes searching for a way out. The information he seeks must be drawn out like prey, touching any connections he can find and following them until it inevitably reveals itself.

Some resist for a short time, but in the end, it only allows him more time to explore. Your valiant effort not to expose the secrets entrusted to you leads you to concentrate hard on something, anything else. You feel sweat roll down your neck, your body burning in that stuffy room with pain, with panic, with desperation.

It feels like a fever, the worst you've ever had. You remember the last time you were ill, laying on that cot in the infirmary, sweating and heaving your guts because of a stupid mistake, filling up your water canteen in that river after refueling in that village and no, _no_ , that mission was secret too. You mustn't think of the planet. When you were ill like this as a child, your mother made you a soup so hot that your lips still burned with spice long after you were done, but it was like a breath of life and it was _good_ , not like the dry rations you choke down on long flights, the easily-produced mash you eat in that crowded mess hall with the mismatched benches on base...but even despite the food, to be back safe on base...yes, the base…

To say he sees it all, or reads it, is a laughable oversimplification of the process. For just these moments, he lives it. The squeak of the seat you always take during briefings, but only as you turn to the left. The way your heart rate only finally returns to normal when you drop out of hyperspace beside the smallest moon, which you always do, because from that approach the islands off the main continent look like three muddy green stepping stones leading you home. The hallway you travel down for no reason other than to see the girl who repairs the droids. He feels the sinking in your stomach when she is not there and the quiet thrill when you hear the rasp of her voice through a doorway, an accent you don't know her well enough to ask about…

Then you are gone and your droid girl is as good as dead.

Days later, he still craves the soup.

This time, it's her memory of the green that gets him.

Her eyes had taken in her first sight of Takodana like a thief standing in a rich man's vault, and indeed, the lush forests practically glimmered in her mind's eye. He's seen the place himself, and it never looked half as beautiful as it did through her eyes, filtered through fifteen years of thirst and sand and struggle.

He knew that she felt she could not have even dreamed of such a place, wondered who she might be had she had the chance to grow in a place like this, so full of life. She could live by the water, maybe even on an island like she'd always imagined. No dry skin here, no grit of sand between her teeth. No rusting ships to scavenge either, but then, she wouldn't need to rely on Jakku's ever-fluctuating exchange rate for the bulk of her calories in a place like this. Here, she could probably hunt a month's worth of meat in a single afternoon. She might even get fat.

That was the bit that nearly made him laugh, that single flash in her mind. He felt sure that he had worn armor heavier than that girl.

And yet here he lay, recovering from wounds she'd given him. What a grave miscalculation he had made. Had he just taken the droid it would have been a drastically different day, but that little glimpse he'd taken had awoken a curiosity inside him. Beneath her fear, a kind of purity, a strength, a righteous sureness in herself that was almost dizzying for him to take in. And he'd wanted more; carried her off to examine like the records he'd sneaked out of the archives and into his room as a child, desperate to read more about the powerful warriors of times past without anyone looking disapprovingly over his shoulder.

Had it been a mistake? Certainly Hux and the others would say so, and it was easy to agree as he experimentally moved the raw skin of his face where a scar would soon harden. But to see the change in her face as she grasped at her very first moments of power, to be inside her head as she slowly, surely pushed into his...it was like witnessing the birth of a new universe. For that moment, her elation had been his, and the constant weight of all his fear had lessened slightly, divided among two hearts now.

And in the end, he had been the one who could not handle it. Had left her to collect himself, to recover from the overwhelming vulnerability she'd made him feel.

He spends three nights awake, just remembering.

* * *

What most people forget to tell first-time travelers is how impossible it is to sleep that first week away from your home sun.

At first she thinks it's the adrenaline. It's natural, she thinks, for it to be hard to wind down after the whirlwind she'd just been through. It's not that she isn't tired. But every time she closes her eyes, she sees bodies falling into the abyss, ships blasting the ground around her feet, the red glow of a lightsaber inches from her neck, held by a creature in a mask…

At least, that's what he'd been then.

By the fourth night back at the base, she begins to think that her problem may be biological, not just psychological. With fifteen of her twenty-odd years spent anchored to that junkyard planet, her body still seems to be on Jakku time—and all the time spent traveling in the Falcon certainly hasn't helped.

Perhaps, she thinks ironically, a true Jedi doesn't _have_ to sleep, can instead replenish their energy by meditating for a few hours each day. That was one of the fairy tales she'd heard about the Jedi, wasn't it? It's hard to sort out now, what was made up and what might in fact be real.

She decides to give it a try anyway.

It takes a few moments of shifting around to find a comfortable position on the floor, but when she does, she's surprised how easy it is to even her breathing and relax even with her back stick straight. Some people find meditating to be a waste of time, she knows, but she has a bit of experience sitting around with only her own mind for company, so what can it hurt?

* * *

What she doesn't realize is that to open her mind this way with no guidance, no training, is like a soft whisper in his ear, even from an innumerable amount of stars away.

But only because he'd been listening for her.

Her energy is troubled, yet still humming with that unmistakeable wholeness that he so lacks. He finds himself holding perfectly still, as if a movement might shatter her presence in his head. Someone so new to this power, this life, ought not to be attuned enough to sense him observing on the other end, but she had surprised him several times mere hours after discovering her skills. She'd pull away immediately if she sensed him again, that much was certain, especially considering the way they had parted.

Would she have killed him? Yes, he realizes after a moment. There is no question there.

Would he have killed her? He thinks he already knows the answer to that as well. He'd had the upper hand for a long moment, after all. She was strong despite the delicate-looking frame, but even wounded, simple gravity was on his side. All it would have taken was a bit of a push…

But what had he done instead? Practically begged her to submit. A power like that would be a crime to snuff out, even his master had known it, had wanted her brought before him so he could feel her potential for himself.

Yes, it must have been the power that continually drew his thoughts.

He takes a steadying breath, his sense of her growing ever-so-slightly stronger. The increasing feeling of tranquility tells him she must be meditating, but an underlying exhaustion betrays the fact that sleep has eluded her as well.

Of course meditation would come naturally to her, he thinks bitterly. Why wouldn't it? As a learner it had always been his weakest point, unable to empty himself of tumultuous thoughts, of anger and ego and desire. Even his attempts to connect with the Dark Side, to focus his anger and hate into an inner power, had resulted in little more than a restless mind constantly dwelling on thoughts and memories he'd rather leave behind.

He sits up suddenly, in spite of the pain. He is beginning to think she exists just to taunt him.

* * *

The sudden swell of jealousy in her chest nearly knocks her over.

Perhaps this is what happens when you open yourself to the Force, she thinks. Her eyes are open now, her heart pounding. Perhaps it shows you truths within yourself that even you are not aware of _. But why would I be jealous?_ She searches her feelings in earnest. _Who would I be jealous of?_

Everyone she knows has had more than their fair share of misfortune, it would seem, and especially in the last few days. It would be almost impossible to compare them, needlessly cruel to try and determine who has the better lot. Is nearly two decades of loneliness and scraping by in the desert sun worse than a lost brother, a traitor son, a dead lover? What about a childhood and free will lost to the First Order? A fear and uncertainty so consuming that each moment of your life feels like it is being lived by two people?

She's not sure why she thinks of him like that. She hates him for what he's done, all the death and fear and division he's caused. Her back still hurts from where it met the tree nearly twenty feet up. He doesn't deserve her sympathy or consideration, yet that moment spent inside his head still lingers with her—all that anger, all that regret, all that dangerous desire and jealousy…

The realization turns her cold.

It is not her own feeling. It belongs to him.

* * *

Somehow, she knows. The flood of fear in his own chest tells him that. Stupid, _stupid_ , he thinks. How is it that he gave himself away? There's no way she should have felt him so clearly with her level of experience, but then, he doesn't know why he's so surprised. The impossible seems to be quite standard with her.

His first reaction to being detected might have been to lash out, but frankly, he's a bit too sore for that. Besides, all the equipment in this room is necessary for his recovery. And anyway, she was already pulling away. If she felt the full force of his anger, she might never open herself that way again, too afraid of his negative energy on the other side. To shut her mind would be disastrous for her power, might stunt her abilities altogether. He couldn't let that happen even if she'd rejected him as a teacher, had looked at him like he was insane for even suggesting it.

Not to mention that he'd never feel that wonderful wholeness of spirit again.

He had to control his emotions. It was a tired refrain from his childhood and training, one he'd rejected and rebelled against his whole life, and he couldn't believe he was now repeating it to himself while drawing slow, steady breaths as he laid back down. If his master were to sense what he was doing, punishment would surely follow. But Snoke isn't here right now, and he won't let himself be the one to frighten Rey off from exploring her power.

He draws another breath, exhales, and pictures the only thing to bring him comfort in a long while.

* * *

As quickly as it had come, the tight feeling in her chest eases. It's an odd sense of ease, not the relief she expects as if pulling her hand from a hot stove, but more like the feeling of calm that comes from a gentle hand on her shoulder, or on the small of her back.

He is still there. This is coming from him.

And the truly odd thing is that she's sure she's never been touched like that, not really, not in a manner that truly brought her comfort. She holds still, paralyzed by both unease and confusion though but a moment ago she was tempted to bolt from her room screaming for help. She hadn't even been sure he was still alive, the way she'd left him across that yawning chasm, but she was positive she felt him again, his energy unmistakeable.

 _Don't be afraid. I feel it too_. That's what he'd said. That had confused her at the time, too. Shouldn't he relish her fear, draw power from it? Why try to comfort her, ease her mind?

Another wave of calm washes over her, one she can't believe comes from the same restless mind she peered inside. It's powerful, especially after nearly a week with no sleep. Another wave, and she feels her eyes droop. Another, and she has to jerk suddenly to catch herself sliding out of her sitting position. Are they in time with his breaths? Or simply pulses of his own mind? _Should he be able to do this to me?_

She is tired enough to decide to think about it later, and climbs into her cot once more. She's safe, after all. He's not inside her mind like he had been before, she can feel that. He's just…present. And his intent is plain, no matter how confusing. She'd begged for sleep several nights in a row, after all, and you know what they say about beggars and choosers. Another wave nearly makes sigh with relief. _Overkill_ , she mumbles as her eyes drift shut, giving in.

This time there are no bodies, no ground crumbling beneath her feet. Only the lush, glimmering greens of a place where she might have grown up with a full stomach and soft hands.


	2. Parallels

The weight of the wrench in her hand is a welcome reminder of lonelier times. Lonelier, but simpler.

When she looks at the ship as just parts, this is what makes the pain erasable, the work finally easy to begin. A ship as a concept comes loaded with associations; a ship has history and loyalties, captains and crews, allies and traitors, casualties and survivors. A ship can be a saviour, a destroyer, a prison, a home. People can be unwelcome on a ship or absent from it. But parts are just parts. You replace them or repair them. They function or they don't.

In the case of the Falcon, most don't.

Repair droids have tidied most of the superficial exterior damage in the past few days, which is all well and good, but it spent a long time under a tarp in Niima Outpost. By Rey's estimate, their hasty escape must have been the first time the thing had even powered on in at least four or five years—much longer than is advisable if you want to exit the atmosphere in one piece. It had handled well enough in a pinch, but given a choice, she'd prefer to give it the extensive tuneup it _really_ needs.

And so she does. Because the time for rest is over, and the alternative is to pack up her three and a half items of clothing (someone on that Starkiller manhandled her wrap, the bastard) and take a brand new, borrowed ship and start a long journey into a brand new, borrowed life, and she has enough variables up in the air for her right now, thank you very much.

Plus, things are just simpler when you have a job to do.

* * *

Two arms, functional. Two legs, injured, but functional. Exercise, physical therapy recommended for full healing. Facial scarring extensive, but ultimately superficial. Lacerations, contusions, muscle strains. All minor, but to be treated daily until fully healed.

This is the inventory of his health, neatly summarized by the pristine white infirmary droid in place of any human staff. They're all too afraid to tend him themselves, know his outbursts, how much more of a fright he becomes when he has to be seen without the mask.

He prefers it this way.

He is more than capable of guiding himself through the movements, gentle and yet challenging in their slowness, their deliberate motion. It's a practice linked almost exclusively to the Jedi, but even years and years later he finds himself still picking up the old exercise at times like this, when the body must be treated delicately, tested for weakness, for pain. Pain can be harnessed, but even those strong in the Dark Side know that some pain is only detrimental to a body's usefulness, to its ability to carry out a higher purpose. Healing must be done before he can return to the brutal training he usually puts himself through, but there is no time to allow strength to wane, muscles to wither.

 _Use it or lose it_. And then he freezes, because he can't think of a time in his life that he's ever let such a trite truism enter his vocabulary before. It sounds nothing like anyone in his company would ever say, much too casual for the superior intonations of upper command, as well as the stilted, overly professional exchanges that the majority of First Order personnel put on whenever they detect him within earshot; terrified, he assumes, of drawing his attention as anything other than just another uniformed cog in the machine.

And then it's obvious, the sun-golden tinge to the phrase, the mocking lilt of it. He almost swears he tastes dirt in his mouth mingled with blood, feels a boot-shaped bruise forming on a stomach that isn't his, hands that are not his own raw from having coarse metal yanked from them. A memory that feels young and bitter.

Of course it belongs to her. _Rey_. He hates that he has so much trouble with her name, hates how reluctant he is to invoke it, but there is power in a name and in this case it's that it makes her real, tangible, alive. She is no specter, no mere concept the way she was when he knew her only as _the girl_. As a dot on a scanner she was nothing but another enemy to fell, another mind to search and toss aside.

But now look where that had gotten him.

He curses, breaks from his position. Her lately disruptions of his concentration are just another reason why it's simpler to be alone.

* * *

The Wookiee's question almost startles Rey, so absorbed was she in her work. She looks up from the rusting part in her hands, just now carefully extracted from the cooling system, the object of her careful concentration. She must have been muttering under her breath without realizing it.

"What? Oh, just...just something people used to say back home." _Use it or lose it_. If her outpost on Jakku had a flag, those words would be printed on it, maybe under a pair of thieving hands, or two blasters aimed at each other.

Another soft wail from Chewbacca, and Rey feels a bitter sort of smile twitch her mouth.

"Yeah," she answers him, "usually spoken as someone was aggressively encouraging you to lose the object in question before you ever had a chance to use it. Not the most accurate use of the sentiment, but it was hardly a university town."

It's a strange dissonance, to both despise a place and yet feel a tie to it, for her sense of the safe and familiar to revolve around a place where the constants of her life were hunger and hard labor, even back when her legs were so short that the journey into town took nearly two hours, too small to board a speeder by herself.

She checks the slant of light from the setting sun, sighs, and places the rusting chunk of metal down on her makeshift workbench beside the panel she has opened up in the wall of the Falcon.

"S'pose I'm going to call it for the night," she tells Chewie, who grants her a grunt of acknowledgement before returning to his own involved repairs.

"Don't work all night," she says, but the admonishment is an empty one because she knows he will. He will be out here for as long as is physically possible for him, and perhaps even a little longer. She isn't sure she's seen him do anything but work since the funeral, even taking his infrequent meals inside the ship, tinkering away in there long before she wakes in the morning and long after she retires at night. At this rate, they'll be ready to fly in another two days, maybe three if some of the trickier mechanisms need attention.

And then how will she be able to delay? She can hardly ask him to stop working.

Her intention is to head back to her temporary sleeping quarters, a spare cot in the pilots' bunk area that the General had rustled up for her with a somewhat gruff apology about limited space and resources, not knowing that Rey would have been grateful for a tent and a patch of dirt to pitch it on. To sleep beneath a real roof inside an actual building was a luxury she couldn't remember ever having, and when she'd said as much in thanks, the General's eyes had softened, her hand briefly clasping Rey's shoulder.

"Already practiced in scarcity," she'd remarked, her voice laced with the oddest combination of humor and grief. "You'll make a fine Jedi yet."

So many expectations of her already, of what she would be. Until a week ago, her biggest goal was finding a way up to the main bridge of the Super Star Destroyer she'd been plundering the lower levels of for the last month or so.

After a few moments of walking, she realizes she's changed course. When she thinks of how she finally succumbed to sleep the previous night, she's not sure she's so eager to get straight to bed anymore. Instead, she takes a turn toward the medical unit.

Finn is, of course, right where she left him. Her eyes flick to the doctor on duty, who looks up from the bandage she is changing on another patient to give her a single nod of acknowledgement before returning to her work. No news means no change, so Rey takes her usual seat beside him, gazing at the smooth plane of his slack face. It's alarming to see it this way, knowing what should be there instead: emotions transparent and alive, uninhibited in every expression. Never a need to guess what's in his head.

He's been unconscious for nearly half the mere week she's known him, but she's sure that she's never owed anyone more. Her time. Her gratitude. Her life.

Gently, she takes his hand.

* * *

He stands over the bed in his own quarters for the first time in days, wary, like a child afraid to succumb to nightmares. The idle mind has proven weak, susceptible to intrusion. Despite the extent to which he has attempted to give himself over to his power, to the darkness, he is still a man. And for men, sleep is necessary.

Gingerly, minding his own soreness, he lies down. It's foolishness, this fear. He can't let himself be governed by his thoughts of her.

 _But it's more than just your thoughts_ , a particularly traitorous voice in his mind reminds him. It's more than the idea of her. It is her, in his mind, in his body, whether she means to be there or not. What a deadly contradiction she is, powerful enough to maintain a connection to him across a galaxy, too untrained to know how to shut down her end of it.

He squeezes his eyes shut as he feels another wave of her wash over him. This time, concern and guilt flood him for a moment before he breathes them out slow. The truly strange thing about experiencing her this way is the way it feels like both giving and receiving at the same time. The concern is like his own and yet, somehow, it could be _for_ him.

He knows it isn't. But alone in this room with his eyes shut, he can imagine that it is.

Another breath, this one oddly shaky, as he feels a ghosting warmth enclose his right hand. He lies still, determined not to even twitch a finger. It's delicate, this connection, and he tells himself that he is merely testing its unique qualities and boundaries. Besides, he's not sure he remembers the last time someone dared lay a hand on him outside of combat.

It's...nice, he admits. This is a private moment. He can think what he wants.

After a while, when the haze of half-sleep settles over him, his mind begins to play tricks. He knows that's what they are, just tricks. Warmth becomes solid flesh, a gentle grip. He views her through half-lidded eyes, through the barrier of lashes. She is speaking something to him, something low, something comforting, something with the gentle boldness of honesty that comes only from believing you cannot be overheard.

But this is his dream, and he wants control now. If he can't have it in waking life, he will take it here. He pulls the hand, attached to the arm, attached to the girl, and she comes to him so he can take inventory of slender limbs, the smooth figure, the sloping bones of the collar leading to the neck that tilts the head demurely under his inspection. The angle of her jaw, which he can almost completely engulf with one hand, to the bone of the cheek, and clear, clear eyes—he examines all of it, and finds no answer to his question, which is this: _what are you?_ And what gives you this power over me?

At that thought, she smiles and it spears him through. Not because of its beauty, but because he knows he has never seen it, never seen a look on her face that was not etched with fear or anger or triumph, which means it is something he himself has imagined, that beauty. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, the problem of her nonexistent smile was identified, processed, invented, and solved.

 _I am like you_ , his imagining of her answers him. _Only human._

Indeed, he thinks, only human. And pulls her closer for more examination.

* * *

"Hey, hey," comes the soothing voice after she jerks awake with a start, "It's alright, it's just me. You must've dozed off."

Rey blinks up at Poe Dameron, eyes wild for a moment. It takes her a second to register the facts; she is still in the medical unit, Finn's hand is still clasped in hers, and her neck hurts like hell. Poe is looking at her kindly.

"I didn't mean to give you such a start," he tells her, smiling. "Why don't you let me take over, go get some proper rest. You've been working day and night on that ship, from what I've heard."

She sniffs, wipes her mouth of drool indelicately, not particularly concerned with what she must look like. "Yes...alright," she says absently, standing. Why is she so flustered? Her dream drains away from her like water in cupped hands, only really the feel of it remaining.

"Hey," Poe says again, as she makes for the door, deciding that bed really is what she needs right now, "You alright?"

"Of course," she says, still a bit distantly. "Just...just thought I was somewhere else, is all."

She walks off at that, a hand touched protectively to mysteriously tingling lips.


End file.
